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Entry: The Empty Manger Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_empty_manger#12526 Post contents: <i>[1]you sound too cosmopolitan to be an American conservative ([2]not to criticize conservative Americans but they seldom take interest in anything beyond the frontiers of their own county).</i> Yes to both. I'd go a step further and argue that we really don't have conservatism in the American political tradition. Most American "conservatives" are in fact what Europeans would call "liberals". Our "Neoconservatives" are neither neo nor conservative, but instead what the English would call "Whigs". Their <i>Parteiprogramm</i> has been around since 1688. And conservative it ain't. Our "Old Right" were really libertarians who didn't smoke pot. Heck, they probably didn't even drink booze. Paul Gottfried has something to say about the absence of Real Conservatism in his new book, which I begin Wednesday. And I still pray that Boyd Cathey will write something for us about Carlism's chief points. Half the problem, Paul, is that Gringos don't don't do too swift with foreign languages, and most of Real Conservatism is in German, French, and Spanish, myself ignorant of the last. To stay on the article's topic (sort of): We in America also don't have "Christian Democracy", by which I mean the application of Catholic Social Teaching, starting with Leo XIII -- a tradition, by the way, that the French Legitimists pioneered. And they were conservative. Sent at: 2008 08 30